Family Heirlooms

by Susan Schneider

Going to the Glass and Pottery Show is a ritual with Mother and me. Twice a year for the last six
years we have waited in line to see the vast displays stretching like arms from the center aisle of
the Convention Center in Springfield, Missouri. But our main purpose, we tell ourselves, is to find
a missing piece of cut crystal stemware which belonged to my grandmother. We are one glass
short of a perfect set of twelve.

Mother carries one goblet with her to compare to those in the various collections. She has
wrapped the glass in a tea towel, and has placed the bundle in an antique basket just large enough
to hold the glass and several prisms also needing mates. The stemware, like my grandmother's
china, will belong to me one day, but each time we visit the glass show, Mother holds the basket
tightly, cradling it to her side. She rarely sets the basket down, but if she does find an antique that
she wants to examine more closely, she hands the basket to me. "Hold this," she says, "and don't
drop it!" Mother has said this to me so often I sometimes wonder if the real heirloom is the glass
in the basket or the warning that comes with it.

"I won't drop it," I say, but even as I am sure that I won't, I am equally sure that I could, and the
space between the two possibilities grows narrower every year. Mother and I share this heritage
of doubt, meddling fears that the objects we protect might fall from our hands, or chip on the side
of the sink. We do not wash crystal; we bathe it. But then the goblet is not an object. Rather it
forms part of a chain stretching from my grandmother's hands to Mother's to mine. We recall our
heritage by holding the glass delicately by the stem; our respect for the crystal makes it oversized,
awkward and more slippery with age.

The Glass and Pottery Show is not a good place to show such doubts. Here vendors from across
the country have unpacked, polished, back-lit, and arranged every piece into families of saffron,
azure, rose, tissue-white, and crystal. Wares jam the tables and dealers create space by tiering
display cubes several feet high. Crystal candlesticks and cut glass bowls totter on the topmost
shelves. Crowds press through booths no wider than pullman kitchens. Mother and I join the long,
slow shuffling parade, craning our necks to see over others' shoulders. But I am I often
claustrophobic and must sometimes step ! to the side and let others pass until I have a more 4
carefully defined sense of space around me.. Still, I am part of this swell of people. Surrounded as
we are by the delicate, the priceless, and the irreplaceable, tension builds, and when a piece does
get broken the sound numbs the crowd. A collective "OOOOOOOOHHHHHH?' follows, then
laughter, each person thinking, "I'm glad I didn't break that?

Neither Mother nor I claim to be educated collectors, though we have gleaned bits of information
from dealers over the years. Our visits to the glass shows have taught us the market value of many
pieces we do own so that now we warn each other, "Don't sell that. It's valuable." Many other
objects which we see I have learned about from Mother.

"Look at this," she says, holding a small glass circled in cobalt blue. "We used to buy cheese in
these during The War." The twining metal flowers Mother remembers as place-card holders, and
she grandly points to saltbowls, knife rests, frogs and refrigerator dishes. "If only I had known
these would be so valuable," Mother says.

I understand her regret. We both compulsively save anything useful, as did my grandmother
before us, and it irks us to think we might be saving the wrong things, and giving away things we
shouldn't.

We are both convinced, however, that we see nothing as fine as the piece of stemware Mother
carries in the basket. Our glass is certainly above this Depression-ware. Pieces as rare as my
grandmother's probably rest in museums now, we tell each other.

The first years Mother carried the glass to the show, we didn't know the pattern name or the
manufacturer. Only after we had roamed the show for a few hours could I goad Mother to
unwrap it for a dealer. Maybe someone could tell us who made it, or where we might find another
like it. But Mother always seemed afraid to ask, as if someone might tell her in a condescending
or nonchalant way that our fine piece of crystal really wasn't fine at all, or challenge our right to
call the piece an heirloom. No one did. One dealer suggested the glass might be Steuben; another
said Tiffany. Finally, a visiting expert on Depression Glass told us the goblet was deftnitely
Tiffany, and suggested we contact a noted dealer in Ohio for the pattern name.

[7]

That winter Mother wrote to the man. She traced the outline of the pattern in pencil onto a piece
of tissue paper, and mailed the tracing, a picture, and a description to the man. Several weeks
later he wrote back stating we might find the pattern in one of two volumes on Tiffany glass. Now
we look for the books as well as the crystal.

The search for the glass might frustrate us if we actively look, but we don't. As we leave the Glass
and Pottery Show, I realize that Mother has not unwrapped the glass, and I have forgotten all
about looking for its match. Neither of us has mentioned the goblet at all. I suspect that my
mother doesn't really want to find a match to the glass. I suspect that she doesn't want to give up
searching for this stemware even though she knows that she will never use it. This doesn't bother
me.

I am building my own collection. Though I love to see the crystal, I search for pottery in bold,
bright colors. This is my idea of elegance. I seek heirlooms with a function, and pieces without
warnings. I have inherited from my grandmother many fine pieces: gilt-edged plates of
handpainted flowers, fluted bowls and candlewick cake platters. But though these are of my
grandmother, they do not remind me of her. When my grandmother was alive she had a name for
these kinds of objects. She called them "Pretties." I never saw her use her pretties, and I keep
them just as she did--on the shelf, away from harm. The pieces I have collected from the glass
shows are whimsical, bright and functional. I won't be too sad if they break or chip because any
lapses I commit will not damage my heritage.

As Mother sets the basket on the back seat floor of the car, I see her smile to herself. It's as if she
is saying to my grandmother, "Here is your piece of stemware, still unmatched, but still
unbroken." While my grandmother lived, I never saw her use this crystal, but the glass has value
to me because of the look in my mother's eye when she holds it, just as she witnessed her mother
doing. By the time the stemware becomes mine, a rich heritage will have passed from my
grandmother's hands to Mother's to mine. And though the stemware comes from my
grandmother, the context comes from my mother. This goblet and ten others like it will remind me
of our visits to the Glass and Pottery Show, a memory like an heirloom--delicate, priceless and
irreplaceable.

Susan Schneider is a native Springfieldian who teaches composition at South west Missouri State
University.